Posts Tagged ‘National Center for Lesbian Rights’

Two federal district judges have issued new rulings in lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration’s ban on military service by transgender individuals, mainly adverse to the government. [Addendum: After this was drafted, we received a decision from a federal magistrate judge in Baltimore on discovery issues in one of the other challenged to the transgender ban. Our summary appears at the end of this posting.]

After the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit refused to lift Seattle U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman’s preliminary injunction against the policy on July 18, she issued a new ruling on July 27 granting the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery and denying the government’s motion for a protective order that would shield President Trump from having to respond to any discovery requests. The Justice Department immediately announced that it would appeal this ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Pechman had previously denied motions for summary judgment in the case, having found that there was a need for discovery before such a ruling could take place.

On August 6, D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had issued the first preliminary injunction against the policy last year, issued two decisions. In one, she rejected the government’s request to vacate her preliminary injunction as moot, finding that the plaintiffs have standing to challenge the “new” policy described by Defense Secretary James Mattis in his February 2018 memo to the President, and agreeing with Judge Pechman that the “new” policy is not essentially different from the “old” one announced by President Trump a year ago. However, Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted a motion by the government to dismiss President Trump as an individual named defendant in the case.

Two other lawsuits challenging the policy are pending in federal district courts in Riverside, California, and Baltimore, Maryland. In both cases, the judges have received motions from the parties that are awaiting decision, similar to those filed with Judges Pechman and Kollar-Kotelly.

To recap for those coming late to this story, Trump tweeted a ban on transgender military service on July 26, 2017, and issued a memorandum a month later describing the policy in slightly more detail, charging Secretary Mattis to propose a plan for implementation by late February, 2018, with the goal of implementing the policy later in March. Trump’s memo specified that Mattis’s previous directive to allow transgender applicants to join the military, which had been announced at the end of June 2017 to go into effect on January 1, 2018, was to be indefinitely delayed, as Trump’s policy would not allow transgender people to enlist. Mattis announced that no action would be taken against now-serving transgender personnel pending the implementation of the policy in March 2018, but there were reports of transgender personnel suffering cancellations of promotions and desire assignments and of planned medical procedures after the policy was announced.

Mattis’s memo to the president in February proposed some modifications to the policy that had been announced in Trump’s August memorandum. Transgender personnel who were already serving and had transitioned and were “stable” in their preferred gender would be allowed to continue serving, based on a determination that the investment in their training outweighed whatever “risk” they posed to the readiness of the military. Furthermore, transgender individuals who had not transitioned or been diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” would be allowed to enlist and serve, provided they refrained from transitioning and served in the sex identified at birth. Otherwise, those diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” would be prohibited from enlisting or serving, and those who could not comply with these requirements would be discharged. The proposal was based on a “finding” by a rigged special committee apparently dominated by committed opponents of transgendered service that allowing transgender people to serve in the military was harmful to the operational efficiency of the service – a finding based on no factual evidence and oblivious to the fact that transgender people had been serving openly without any problems since the Obama Administration lifted the prior ban at the end of June 2016.

Four lawsuits had been filed in response to the summer 2017 policy announcement, and in a matter of months the four district courts had issued preliminary injunctions, having found it likely that the plaintiffs would prevail on their argument that the policy violates the Equal Protection requirements of the 5th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. As compelled by the preliminary injunctions, the Defense Department allowed transgender people to submit applications to enlist beginning January 1, 2018, after losing a last-ditch court battle to continue the enlistment ban, but there were reports that the applications they received were getting very slow processing, and all indications are that few have been accepted for service.

Trump responded to Mattis’s February 2018 memo by “withdrawing” his prior memo and tweet, and authorizing Mattis to adopt the implementation plan he was recommending by late March. The Justice Department then filed motions in all the lawsuits seeking to lift the preliminary injunctions. Their argument was, in part, that the “new” policy was sufficiently different from the one that had been “withdrawn” as to moot the lawsuits. They further contended that the plaintiffs who were already serving and would be allowed to continue serving under the “new” policy no longer had standing to challenge the policy in court. The Department also argued that plaintiff’s attempts to conduct discovery in the case should be put on hold until there was a definitive appellate ruling on their motion to lift the preliminary injunctions.

On April 13, Judge Pechman rejected the government’s motion to lift the preliminary injunction, having already ordered that discovery proceed. In his initial tweet, Trump had claimed that he had consulted with generals and other experts before adopting the policy, but the identities of these people were not revealed, and the government has stonewalled against any attempt to discover their identities or any internal executive branch documents that might have been generated on this issue, making generalized claims of executive privilege. Similarly, the February memorandum released under Mattis’s name did not identify any of the individuals responsible for its composition, and naturally the plaintiffs are also seeking to discover who was involved in putting it together and what information they purported to rely upon.

Judge Pechman’s July 27 order to compel discovery specified the materials sought by the plaintiffs, and pointed out that under federal evidentiary rules, any claim of privilege against disclosure is subject to evaluation by the court. “The deliberative privilege is not absolute,” she wrote. “Several courts have recognized that the privilege does not apply in cases involving claims of governmental misconduct or where the government’s intent is at issue.”

The question, under 9th Circuit precedents, is “whether plaintiffs’ need for the materials and the need for accurate fact-finding override the government’s interest in non-disclosure. In making this determination, relevant factors include: (1) the relevance of the evidence; (2) the availability of other evidence; (3) the government’s role in the litigation; and (4) the extent to which disclosure would hinder frank and independent discussion regarding contemplated policies and decisions.” There is a formal process for invoking privilege, which requires the government to “provide precise and certain reasons for preserving the confidentiality of designated material.”

In this case, Judge Pechman had previously determined that discrimination because of gender identity involves a “suspect classification” for purposes of equal protection requirements, which means the government has the burden of proving that there is a compelling justification for the discrimination. In this case, however, the government has articulated only a generalized judgment that service by transgender individuals is too “risky” based on no facts whatsoever. Judge Pechman concluded in granting the plaintiffs’ discovery motion that “the deliberative process privilege does not apply in this case.”

The government had moved for a protective order “precluding discovery directed at President Trump.” While conceding that Trump has “not provided substantive responses or produced a privilege log” listing specifically what information has to be protected against disclosure, the government contended that “because the requested discovery raises ‘separation of powers concerns,’ Plaintiffs must exhaust discovery ‘from sources other than the President and his immediate White House advisors and staff’ before he is required to formally invoke the privilege.”

Judge Pechman noted that so far the government has refused to provide any information about how the policy decision was made or developed, and has failed to identify the specific documents and other information for which it claims privilege. In a footnote, she commented, “The Court notes that Defendants have steadfastly refused to identify even one general or military official President Trump consulted before announcing the ban.” Thus, she found, there was no basis for the court to evaluate “whether the privilege applies and if so, whether Plaintiffs have established a showing of need sufficient to overcome it.” Indeed, she concluded in a prior decision, as far as the record stands, it looks as if Trump made the whole thing up himself without relying on any military expertise. Thus, she has preliminarily rejected the government’s contention that the policy would enjoy the deference normally extended to military policies adopted based on the specialized training and expertise of the military policy makers.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s August 6 ruling focused on an issue that Judge Pechman had previously decided: whether the plaintiffs had standing to continue challenging the policy after Mattis’s memo supplanted the “withdrawn” earlier policy announcements. She had little trouble in determining that all the plaintiffs, even those who are currently-serving transgender personnel who would be allowed to consider serving under the “new” policy, still had standing, which requires a finding that implementing the policy would cause them harm.

“The Court rejects Defendants’ argument that Plaintiffs no longer have standing because they are not harmed by the Mattis Implementation Plan,” she wrote, stating that “the effect of that plan would be that individuals who require or have undergone gender transition would be absolutely disqualified from military service, individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria would be largely disqualified from military service, and, to the extent that there are any individuals who identify as ‘transgender’ but do not fall under the first two categories, they would be allowed to serve, but only ‘in their biological sex’ (which means that openly transgender persons would generally not be allowed to serve in conformance with their identity.)” Furthermore, those who have already transitioned and are now serving would be doing so under the stigma of having been labeled as “unfit” for military service and presenting an undue risk to military readiness, and would likely suffer prejudice in terms of their assignments and their treatment by fellow military personnel, as well as emotional harm.

“The Mattis Implementation Plan sends a blatantly stigmatizing message to all members of the military hierarchy that has a unique and damaging effect on a narrow and identifiable set of individuals, of which Plaintiffs are members,” she wrote. They would be serving “pursuant to an exception to a policy that explicitly marks them as unfit for service. No other service members are so afflicted. These Plaintiffs are denied equal treatment because they will be the only service members who are allowed to serve only based on a technicality; as an exception to a policy that generally paints them as unfit.”

She concluded that “because their stigmatic injury derives from this unequal treatment, it is sufficient to confer standing.” She pointed out that beyond stigmatization, the Implementation Plan “creates a substantial risk that Plaintiffs will suffer concrete harms to their careers in the near future. There is a substantial risk that the plan will harm Plaintiffs’ career development in the form of reduced opportunities for assignments, promotion, training, and deployment. These harms are an additional basis for Plaintiffs’ standing.” She rejected the government’s contention that these harms were only “speculative.”

Furthermore, she rejected the claim that Trump’s “withdrawal” of his August 2017 memorandum and the substitution of the Mattis Implementation Plan made the existing lawsuits moot, agreeing with Judge Pechman that the “new” plan was merely a method of “implementing” the previously announced policy. She found that the Implementation Plan “prevents service by transgender individuals,” just as Trump had directed in August 2017, and the minor deviations from the complete categorical ban were not significant enough to make it substantially different.

Thus she refused to dissolve the preliminary injunction. She refrained from ruling on motions for summary judgment on the merits of the equal protection claim, because there are sharply contested facts in this case and no discovery has taken place, so it can’t be decided purely as a matter of law. The facts count here in court, even if they don’t seem to count in the White House or the Defense Department.

However, Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted the government’s motion to partially dissolve the injunction as it applies personally to Trump, and granted the motion to “dismiss the President himself as a party to this case. Throughout this lawsuit,” she wrote, “Plaintiffs ask this Court to enjoin a policy that represents an official, non-ministerial act of the President, and declare that policy unlawful. Sound separation-of-power principles counsel the Court against granting these forms of relief against the President directly.” Thus, she concluded, there was no reason to retain Trump as a defendant. If the Plaintiffs prevail on the merits, an injunction aimed at the Defense Department’s leadership preventing the policy from taking effect will provide complete relief.

The Plaintiffs complained that removing Trump from the case as a defendant would undermine their attempt to discover the information necessary to make their case, since individuals who are parties to litigation are particularly susceptible to discovery requests. The judge wrote that “it would not be appropriate to retain the President as a party to this case simply because it will be more complicated to seek discovery from him if he is dismissed. To the extent that there exists relevant and appropriate discovery related to the President, Plaintiffs will still be able to obtain that discovery despite the President not being a party to the case.” And, she concluded, “Plaintiffs will be able to enforce their legal rights and obtain all relief sought in this case without the President as a party.”

The judge treated as moot the Defendants’ motion for a protective order shielding Trump from having to respond to discovery requests. “However,” she wrote, “the Court reiterates that dismissing the President as a party to this case does not mean that Plaintiffs are prevented from pursuing discovery related to the President. The court understands that the parties dispute whether discovery related to the President which has been sought by Plaintiffs is precluded by the deliberative process or presidential communication privileges, and the Court makes no ruling on those disputes at this point. The Court will be issuing further opinions addressing other dispositive motions that have been filed in this case. After all of those opinions have been issued, if necessary, the Court will give the parties further guidance on the resolution of the discovery requests in this case.” In a footnote, Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted Judge Pechman’s July 27 discovery order, and that defendants were appealing it to the 9th Circuit. The judge emphasized that the preliminary injunction remains in effect for all of the remaining defendants in the case, so the policy may not be implemented while the case continues.

The possibility that Trump will be ordered to submit to questioning under oath in at least one of these cases remains a reality, but any attempt by the Plaintiffs to do so would undoubtedly arouse spirited opposition from the Defense Department, officially based on claims of privilege, but realistically due to the likelihood that Trump would perjure himself under such questioning. Recall the historical precedent: The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Clinton based, in part, on the charge that he committed perjury during questioning before a grand jury by the Special Counsel investigating his affair with Monica Lewinski. Thus, at least in that case, the House considered presidential perjury to be an impeachable offense.

On August 14, U.S. Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite, to whom Baltimore U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis had referred discovery matters in Stone v. Trump, another one of the pending cases, issued a ruling granting in part the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of deliberative materials regarding Trump’s July 2017 tweet, August 2017 memorandum, the “activities of the DoD’s so-called panel of experts and its working groups” who put together the memorandum ultimately submitted by Mattis to the President in February 2018, and deliberative materials regarding that Implementation Plan and the President’s March memorandum, “including any participation or interference in that process by anti-transgender activists and lobbyists.” However, noting that a motion is pending before Judge Garbis to dismiss Trump as a defendant in the case, Judge Copperthite declined to rule on the government’s request for a protective order that would shield Trump from having to respond to discovery requests directed to him, “pending the resolution of the motion to dismiss President Trump as a party.” Cooperthite wrote that “no interrogatories or document requests will be directed to President Trump as a party, but may be directed to other parties pursuant to this Memorandum Opinion. If the Motion to Dismiss is denied, the Court will revisit the issue of the protective order as to President Trump.”

Cooperthite faced a practical dilemma in dealing with the government’s requests to shield Trump from discovery. “On July 27, 2017, President Trump tweeted transgender persons would no longer be able to serve in the military and as for any deliberative process, simply stated this policy occurred after consulting with ‘my Generals and military experts.’ There is no evidence to support the concept that ‘my Generals and military experts’ would have the information Plaintiffs request. There is no evidence provided to this Court that ‘my Generals and military experts’ are identified, in fact do exist, or that they would be included in document requests and interrogatories propounded to the Executive Branch, excluding the President. By tweeting his decisions to the world, the President has, in fact narrowed the focus of Plaintiffs’ inquiries to the President himself. The Presidential tweets put the President front and enter as the potential discriminating official.” So there is a real question whether discovery that doesn’t include President Trump is at all meaningful, since the ultimate legal question in the litigation is the intent of the government in adopting the ban which is, at bottom, Trump’s intent. On the other hand, discovery directed at President Trump raises serious questions about separation of powers and the traditional respect for the confidentiality of internal White House policy deliberations.

“So many factors are unknown at this juncture in the litigation,” wrote Copperthite. “It is unknown whether Plaintiffs can obtain the information necessary from the non-Presidential discovery to define the ‘intent’ of the government with respect to the transgender ban. Defendants offer as an alternative, a stay of discovery with respect to the President, until the Motion to Dismiss the President as a party is decided. If the President, as the discriminating official, tweeted his transgender ban sua sponte as alleged, this Court sees no alternative to obtaining the intent of the government other than denying the protective order with respect to President Trump.” However, he wrote, precedents “instruct this Court to give deference to the executive branch because ‘occasions for constitutional confrontation between the two branches should be avoided whenever possible.’” Thus, Copperthite decided to put off deciding the protective order issue until after Judge Garbis decides whether to dismiss Trump as a party, but for now will order the defendants only to comply with discovery requests directed to defendants other than Trump, Secretary Mattis and the Secretaries of the various military branches.

In a blunt rebuke to President Donald Trump, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, discerning no factual basis for Trump’s July 26 tweet decreeing a ban on military service by transgender people or the August 25 Memorandum fleshing out the decreed policy, issued a preliminary injunction on October 30, the effect of which is “to revert to the status quo with regard to accession and retention that existed before the issuance of the Presidential Memorandum – that is, the retention and accession policies established in the June 30, 2016 Directive-type Memorandum as modified by Secretary of Defense James Mattis on June 30, 2017.” Doe v. Trump, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178892, 2017 WL 4873042 (D.D.C., Oct. 30, 2017).

The practical effect of the preliminary injunction, which will stay in effect until the court issues a final ruling on the merits of the case (unless an appellate court reverses it in the meanwhile) is that the policy on transgender service announced on June 30, 2016, by former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter during the Obama Administration, will remain in effect and the President’s tweet and subsequent Memorandum purporting to revoke these policies, which the Administration planned to put into effect in February and March, are blocked for now. By incorporating reference to Secretary Mattis’s June 30, 2017, Directive, the judge’s order requires that the Defense Department allow transgender people to enlist beginning January 1, 2018.

Trump’s August 25 Memorandum had specified that the policy it announced would go into effect by no later than March 23, 2018, regarding the requirement to discharge all transgender personnel, and that the ban on enlistments would be permanent, at least until the President was persuaded that it should be lifted.

Key to the October 30 ruling was Kollar-Kotelly’s conclusion that at this stage the plaintiffs, represented by National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Advocates and Defenders, have adequately established that they are likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that a ban on military service by transgender people violates their equal protection rights under the 5th Amendment, and that allowing the ban to go into effect while the case is pending would cause irreparable harm to them that could not be remedied later by monetary damages.

The judge concluded that a policy that explicitly discriminates against people because of their gender identity is subject to “heightened scrutiny” under the 5th Amendment, which means that it is presumed to be unconstitutional and the burden is placed on the government to show an “exceedingly persuasive” reason to justify it. “As a class,” she wrote, “transgender individuals have suffered, and continue to suffer, severe persecution and discrimination. Despite this discrimination, the court is aware of no argument or evidence suggesting that being transgender in any way limits one’s ability to contribute to society.”

This was staking out new ground in the absence of a clear precedent by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit or the Supreme Court. Alternatively, she noted, other courts of appeals in the 6th and 11th Circuits have ruled that gender identity discrimination is really sex discrimination and should be evaluated by the same “heightened scrutiny” standard that courts use to evaluate sex discrimination claims against the government. (A petition by the Kenosha, Wisconsin, school district is pending at the Supreme Court presenting the question whether gender identity discrimination is sex discrimination, in the context of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and bathroom access in public schools.)

As for the justifications advanced by the government for Trump’s ban, the judge wrote, “There is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effect on the military at all. In fact, there is considerable evidence that it is the discharge and banning of such individuals that would have such effects.”

The judge also concluded that the public interest is served by blocking the ban, since harm to the military from allowing transgender service was non-existent while letting the ban go into effect would actually impose significant costs and readiness issues on the military, including the loss of a large investment in training of transgender people now serving and the cost of recruiting and training people to take their places.

A major part of Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s decision was devoted to refuting the Administration’s contention that she did not have jurisdiction to decide the case. She characterized their arguments as raising a “red herring,” at least in terms of the retention and accession portions of Trump’s Memorandum. The government argued that because the August 25 Memorandum delayed implementation of the policy until next year, nobody had standing to challenge it yet, as none of the individual plaintiffs in the case has suffered tangible harm. The judge accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that both intangible and tangible harm was imposed as soon as Trump declared his policy, stigmatizing transgender people as unworthy to serve, tarnishing their reputations, and creating uncertainty and emotional distress as to their future employment. Furthermore, federal courts have long held that depriving a person of equal protection of the laws imposes an injury for purposes of constitutional standing to mount a legal challenge against a policy.

The issue that seems to have provoked Trump’s July 26 tweet was military payment for sex reassignment surgery. Several Republican House members, outraged by that chamber’s rejection of their proposed amendment to the Defense appropriations bill to bar any payment by the Department for such procedures, complained to the president and reportedly threatened to withhold their support for the must-pass appropriations bill if their demand was not met. The simple-minded president apparently jumped to the obvious conclusion: barring all transgender people from the service would solve the problem while satisfying the anti-transgender biases of his political base. In common with his other major policy proclamations by tweeting, this seemed to be impulsive, not vetted for legality or defensibility, and oblivious to the harm it would do to thousands of people.

The way in which Trump announced his decision contributed to the judge’s conclusions. The policy was announced without any factual basis, by contrast with the 2016 policy decision, which followed several years of study, a report by the RAND Corporation (a widely-respected non-partisan military policy think-tank), wide-ranging surveys and participation of numerous military officials. The outcome of all this study was a well-documented conclusion that there was no good reason why transgender people should not be allowed to serve, explicitly rejecting the grounds raised by Trump in support of his decision. The judge noted the irony of Trump’s methodology: first announce a ban, then a month later task Defense Department leaders with setting in motion a process to study the issue, and mandate that the policy go into effect several months later, with the study limited to recommending how to implement the ban.

Attorneys for the government argued, in effect, that the policy is still in development and that at present it is not clear what the final, implemented policy will be, including whether it would provide discretion to military leaders to decide whether to discharge individual transgender personnel or to allow particular individuals to enlist (such as, for example, highly qualified people who had already transitioned and thus would not be seeking such procedures while serving). Their arguments lacked all credibility, however, in light of the absolute ban proclaimed by Trump on July 26, and the directive to implement that ban contained in the August 25 Memorandum.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted the government’s motion to dismiss the part of the complaint relying on the theory of “estoppel” as opposed to their constitutional claim. She found that none of the plaintiffs had alleged facts that would support a claim that they had individually relied on the June 2016 policy announcement and its implementation in a way that would support the rarely-invoked doctrine that the government is precluded from changing a policy upon which people have relied.

Despite its length (76 pages), Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion left some ambiguity about the very issue that sparked Trump’s tweet – availability of sex reassignment surgery for transgender personnel while this case is pending. Trump cited the cost of providing such treatment as one of the reasons for his ban, but the judge noted that the actual costs were a trivial fraction of the Defense Department’s health care budget.

However, the judge granted the government’s motion to dismiss the part of the complaint that specifically challenged Trump’s August 25 Memorandum dealing with sex reassignment surgery, because she found that none of the individual plaintiffs in the case had standing to challenge it or to seek preliminary injunctive relief against it while the case is pending. Among other things, the August 25 Memorandum provided that such procedures could continue to be covered until the implementation date of the policy next year, and that transitions that were under way could progress to completion. And the government represented to the court that those procedures would continue to be covered at least until final implementation of the policy. The dismissal was “without prejudice,” which means that if additional plaintiffs with standing are added to the complaint, this part of the case could be revived.

On the other hand, attorneys for the plaintiffs, announcing that the ruling was a total victory for their clients, argued that the order to revert to the June 2016 policy while the case is pending necessarily included the part of that policy that allowed for coverage of sex reassignment by the Defense Department for serving personnel. This conclusion is plausible but not certain, because the conclusion of the judge’s opinion specifies that the preliminary injunction applies to “the retention and accession policies” established in June 2016 and doesn’t explicitly say anything about coverage of reassignment procedures. Of course, if DoD balks at covering the procedures, the plaintiffs can go back to the judge for clarification.

Response to the opinion by the White House and the Justice Department was dismissive, suggesting that an appeal is likely. Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion is not the last word, since similar motions for preliminary injunctions are on file in several other district courts around the country where other groups of plaintiffs have filed challenges to the ban.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s judicial career began when President Ronald Reagan appointed her to be a District of Columbia trial judge in 1984. President Bill Clinton appointed her to the U.S. District Court in 1997. Although she became eligible to take senior status many years ago, she continues to serve as a full-time active member of the federal trial bench at age 74. Her rulings in major cases exhibit an independent, non-partisan approach to deciding politically-charged cases, with no clear predispositions reflecting the presidents who appointed her.

Resolving a difference of views between two panels of the state’s intermediate Court of Appeals, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on September 19 that state statutes providing that the husband of a woman who gives birth to a child after undergoing donor insemination with the husband’s consent is a legal parent of the child must extend equally to the wife of a woman who gives birth to a child after undergoing anonymous donor insemination with her wife’s consent. The ruling in McLaughlin v. McLaughlin, 2017 WL 4126939, is a logical application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26, 2017, ruling in Pavan v. Smith, which dealt affirmatively with the related question whether a state must recognize the parental status of a same-sex spouse by listing her as a parent on the child’s birth certificate, and of course was ultimately governed by the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges.

The Supreme Court made clear in Pavan that the constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, earlier recognized by the Court in Obergefell in 2015, is not just about the right to marry and have other states recognize the marriage, but also about the right to enjoy all the benefits and be subject to all the obligations of marriage on an equal basis with different-sex couples. Applying this principal to an Arizona parentage statute that, by its terms, only applies to the parental rights of men, the Arizona court adopted a gender-neutral construction of the statute, rejecting the argument by one partially dissenting judge that correcting the statute’s constitutional flaw should be left to the legislature.

Kimberly and Suzan were married in California in 2008, during the five-month period between the California Supreme Court’s In re Marriage Cases decision and the adoption of Proposition 8, which enacted a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to different-sex couples. The California Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the same-sex marriages contracted during that five-month period, such as the McLaughlin marriage, were fully valid under California law. The women decided to have a child together. Suzan went through donor insemination, but unsuccessfully. Kimberly then went through the procedure and became pregnant. They moved to Arizona during the pregnancy.

Before the birth of their child, they signed a joint parenting agreement in February 2011, in which they declared that Suzan would be a “co-parent” of the child, stating: “Kimberly McLaughlin intends for Suzan McLaughlin to be a second parent to her child, with the same rights, responsibilities, and obligations that a biological parent would have to her child” and that “should the relationship between us end, it is the parties’ intention that the parenting relationship between Suzan McLaughlin and the child shall continue with shared custody, regular visitation, and child support proportional to custody time and income.” State courts generally take the position that such parenting contracts, while evidence of the intent of the parties, is not binding on the court in a subsequent custody determination during a divorce, where the court’s legal role is to determine custody and visitation issues based on the court’s evaluation of the child’s best interests. The women also executed wills naming Suzanne as a part of the child, a boy who was born in June 2011.

Kimberly, a doctor, worked to support the family, and Suzan stayed at home to care for the baby. By the time the child was almost two years old in 2013, the women’s relationship had deteriorated and Kimberly moved out with the child, cutting off Suzan’s contact with her son. Suzan then filed petitions in state court seeking dissolution of the marriage and legal decision-making and parenting time with the child. She couldn’t file for a divorce, because Arizona did not recognize same-sex marriages at that time. She included a constitutional challenge to the state’s anti-gay marriage laws in her lawsuit, and the state intervened to defend its laws.

While Suzan’s case was pending, a federal district court in Arizona declared the state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional, a result upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court subsequently denied in November 2014 an attempt by other states in the circuit to get the 9th Circuit’s marriage equality rulings reversed. Of course, on June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling in Obergefell made clear that Arizona would have to recognize Suzan and Kimberly’s California marriage under its divorce and custody laws. The state dropped its intervention in the case, and Suzan’s lawsuit turned into a divorce case. But the question remained about her status as a parent to the child, to whom she is not biologically related.

The trial judge in Pima County, Lori B. Jones, confronted a parentage statute stating that “a man is presumed to be the father of the child if he and the mother of the child were married at any time in the ten months immediately preceding the birth or the child is born within ten months after the marriage is terminated.” The parental status under the statute is legal, not biological, although a man could rebut the legal presumption by showing that another man was the biological father or that his wife had conceived through donor insemination without his consent. However, the Arizona laws made clear that if a husband consented to his wife’s donor insemination, he would be presumed to be the child’s legal father. The problem was the gendered language of the statute.

Wrote Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Scott Bales in describing the trial court’s reasoning in ruling in favor of Suzan, “Based on Obergefell, the court reasoned that it would violate Suzan’s Fourteenth Amendment rights not to afford her the same presumption of paternity that applies to a similarly situated man in an opposite-sex marriage.” Judge Jones also concluded that in this kind of case the birth mother should not be allowed to attempt to rebut the presumption where it was undisputed that her same-sex spouse had consented to the insemination process and would be obligated to contribute to the support of the child.

Kimberly sought relief from the court of appeals, which was denied. That court both agreed with Judge Jones’ reasoning on the Fourteenth Amendment issue and further reasoned that Kimberly should be “equitably estopped from rebutting Suzan’s presumption of parentage.” Equitable estoppel is a legal doctrine that courts invoke to prevent a party from attempting to assert a legal right that would be contrary to their prior representations and actions. In this case, since Kimberly consented to the insemination and contracted with Suzan to recognize her full parental rights toward the child, she could not now turned around and attempt to avoid those actions by showing that Suzan was not the child’s biological father, which Suzan clearly is not.

After the court of appeals issued it opinion in this case, a different division of the state’s court of appeals released a contrary ruling in Turner v. Steiner, 242 Ariz. 494 (2017). By a 2-1 vote, that court “concluded that a female same-sex spouse could not be presumed a legal parent [under the statute] because the presumption is based on biological differences between men and women and Obergefell does not require courts to interpret paternity statutes in a gender-neutral manner.”

The Arizona Supreme Court granted Kemberly’s petition to appeal the court of appeals ruling because application of the parentage statute to same-sex marriages “is a recurring issue of statewide importance.”

Chief Justice Bales’s opinion for the court made clear that one could easily resolve this dispute in favor of Suzan without even referring to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Pavan, because the earlier Obergefell opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy addressed all the salient issues in very clear language. The idea that Obergefell required only that states allow same-sex couples to marry and recognize as valid legally-contracted same-sex marriages from other states was contrary to the language and reasoning of the Supreme Court. “In Obergefell,” wrote Bales, “the Court repeatedly framed both the issue and its holding in terms of whether states can deny same-sex couples the same ‘right’ to marriage afforded opposite-sex couples.” For example, quoting from Kennedy’s opinion: “The Constitution does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex,” and further, wrote Bales, “noting harms that result from denying same-sex couples the ‘same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples.’” In particular, the Supreme Court had emphasized the importance to children of same-sex couples have equal recognition of their families.

“Such broad statements reflect that the plaintiffs in Obergefell sought more than just recognition of same-sex marriages,” wrote Bales, noting that the Michigan plaintiffs in one of the cases consolidated before the Court were a same-sex couple who sought to marry to secure the parental status of both of them to the children they were jointly raising, and, continued Bales, “the benefits attendant to marriage were expressly part of the Court’s rationale for concluding that the Constitution does not permit states to bar same-sex couples from marriage ‘on the same terms.’ It would be inconsistent with Obergefell,” he continued, “to conclude that same-sex couples can legally marry but states can then deny them the same benefits of marriage afforded opposite-sex couples.” The subsequent decision in Pavan, the Arkansas birth certificate case, just drove home the point in the specific context of parental status and rights.

The Arizona Supreme Court concluded that the benefit of the parental presumption that is enjoyed by the spouse of a woman who gives birth is one of the “benefits of marriage” that must be equally afforded to same-sex couples. It rejected Kimberly’s argument, similar to that of the other panel of the Arizona Court of Appeals, that the statute dealt only with biological parentage. This was never a particularly logical argument, since the overall statutory scheme in Arizona extended the parental presumption to situations where the man was not the child’s biological father, making it conclusive when he had consented to his wife’s insemination with donor sperm.

The court then faced the question whether the statute should just be struck down as unconstitutional, terminating any parental presumption, or extended through a gender-neutral interpretation to apply to same-sex couples. The court decided that extending the statute was more in line with the legislature’s overall purpose than would be striking it down. The goal, after all, was to support families and solidify parent-child ties, which was best achieved by extending the parental presumption to lesbian couples. Thus, the court vacated the decision of the court of appeals and affirmed the decision of Pima County Superior Court Judge Jones, upholding Suzan’s parental status and rights, with details to be worked out in the trial court, hopefully by agreement of the ex-spouses.

The court lost one member on this last point, as Justice Clint Bolick argued in partial dissent that the court was exceeding its role by improperly reinterpreting statutory language to cure the constitutional problem. “The marital presumption that the majority finds unconstitutional and rewrites is not, as the majority characterizes it, a ‘state-benefit statute,’” he insisted. “Rather, it is part of an integrated, comprehensive statute that serves the highly important and wholly legitimate purpose of providing a mechanism to establish a father’s rights and obligations.” Viewed on its own, he insisted, it was not unconstitutional. “A paternity statute does not offend the Constitution because only men can be fathers,” he said, pointing to another opinion by Justice Kennedy in a case upholding different rules for determining a child’s U.S. citizenship based on the citizenship of the mother or the father in a marriage between citizens of different countries. The majority had rejected Kimberly’s reliance on this decision, but Bolick contended that “it is not the paternity statute that is unconstitutional, but rather the absence of a mechanism to provide parenthood opportunities to single-sex couples on equal terms appropriate to their circumstances.” He would leave it to the legislature to fix the problem. Bolick would send the case to the trial court to be decided without any parental presumption, presumably (since he doesn’t spell it out) leaving the trial court to determine whether it was in the best interest of the child for the woman who was formerly married to the child’s birth mother to have decision-making and visitation rights.

Suzan is represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, whose legal director, Shannon Minter, argued the case in the Arizona Supreme Court, assisted by staff attorneys Emily Haan and Catherina Sakimora, with local counsel Claudia D. Work of Campbell Law Group in Phoenix. Kimberly is represented by Keith Berkshire and Erica L. Gadberry of Berkshire Law Office in Phoenix. Several amicus briefs were filed with the court, including briefs from the ACLU, a University of Arizona law school clinic, and a group of Arizona Family Law Practitioners.

On July 26, to the surprise of Defense Department officials and members of the White House staff, Donald Trump transmitted a series of three tweets beginning at 8:55 a.m. announcing a new policy concerning military service by transgender individuals. “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…… ….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming….. ….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.” This appeared to be a complete reversal of a policy decision made a year earlier by the Defense Department, which after a period of prolonged study that included a report commissioned from the RAND Corporation (a “think-tank” that specializes in producing studies on defense-related issues by contract with the DoD) and widespread consultations within the military and with military allies that allow transgender individuals to serve had concluded to rescind an existing regulation that established a ban on service by transgendered individuals on purported medical grounds. As a result of the policy newly announced during June 2016, hundreds of transgender service members “came out” to their superior officers, and some service members who had been concealing their gender identity for years began the process of transition with the assurance that the costs would be covered under military health policies. Estimates of the number of transgender service members ranged from a few thousand as high as 15,000, most of whom have not yet made their presence known to their commanding officers. This unknown group likely includes many officers as well as enlisted personnel.

Attempts to discern details of the new policy were at first unsuccessful because neither the usual sources in the White House nor the Pentagon had received any advance notice or details. Admiral Paul F. Zukunft, Commandant of the Coast Guard, immediately announced that the Coast Guard would not “abandon” its several openly-transgender members, and that he and his staff had reached out to reassure them. The other military service heads and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff quickly announced that there would be no change of policy until some formal directive came from the Office of the President. A spontaneous presidential tweet was not deemed by the Pentagon to be an order to abandon an existing published policy. The White House finally issued a document titled “Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security” on August 25, signed by President Trump, directing a series of steps that appeared to fall far short of the draconian July 26 tweets.

After a paragraph summarizing what had been done the previous summer and noting that the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security had extended a July 1, 2017, date for allowing transgender people to join the military to January 1, 2018, the President stated his reasoning: “In my judgment, the previous Administration failed to identify a sufficient basis to conclude that terminating the Departments’ longstanding policy and practice would not hinder military effectiveness and lethality, disrupting unit cohesion, or tax military resources, and there remain meaningful concerns that further study is needed to ensure that continued implementation of last year’s policy change would not have those negative effects.” This was stated in blithe disregard of the fact that over the past year transgender military service members, in reliance on the announced policy change, had come out to their commanders by the hundreds and that there was no evidence during that time of any adverse effect on military operations or unit cohesion, or of significant strain on the military’s budget attributable to this policy change. There has been no reporting that military commanders had asked to abandon the policy allowing transgender individuals to serve, and there has been no reporting that either Trump or members of his staff have actually reviewed the voluminous materials generated by the review process undertaken by the DoD prior to announcing its change of policy in June 2016, or were reacting to actual data indicating problems over the past year (since there have not been reports of any such problems).

After invoking the president’s powers as Commander in Chief, the Memorandum continues, “I am directing the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the U.S. Coast Guard, to return to the longstanding policy and practice on military service by transgender individuals that was in place prior to June 2016 until such time as a sufficient basis exists upon which to conclude that terminating that policy and practice would not have the negative effects discussed above. The Secretary of Defense, after consulting with the Secretary of Homeland Security, may advise me at any time, in writing, that a change to this policy is warranted.”

The Memorandum then sets out specific “directives,” apparently intended to be the operative provisions of the Memorandum. First is to “maintain the currently effective policy regarding accession of transgender individuals into military service beyond January 1, 2018, until such time as the Secretary of Defense, after consulting with the Secretary of Homeland Security, provides a recommendation to the contrary that I find convincing.” In other words, the existing ban on enlisting transgender individuals will continue indefinitely, but can be ended when the Secretary of Defense convinces the president to end it. Second is to “halt all use of DoD or DHS resources to fund sex reassignment surgical procedures for military personnel, except to the extent necessary to protect the health of an individual who has already begun a course of treatment to reassign his or her sex.” Interestingly, this directive mentions only “sex reassignment surgical procedures” but not any of the other costs associated with gender transition, including hormone treatment, which may reflect either ignorance by the White House staffers who drafted the Memorandum or a deliberate intention to make the exclusion as narrow as possible, focusing only on the political “flashpoint” of surgery. The Memorandum states that this second directive about surgical expenses will take effect on March 23, 2018. In other words, transgender individuals currently serving will continue to be covered for sex reassignment surgical procedures at least until March 23, 2018, and continuing beyond then if cutting off coverage on that date interferes with completing surgical procedures already under way. Or at least, that’s what it appears to say.

Third, in the section titled “effective dates and implementation,” the Memorandum gives the Secretary of Defense until February 21, 2018, to submit to the president a “plan for implementing both the general policy set forth in section 1(b) of this memorandum and the specific directives set forth in section 2 of this memorandum. The implementation plan shall adhere to the determinations of the Secretary of Defense, made in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, as to what steps are appropriate and consistent with military effectiveness and lethality, budgetary constraints, and applicable law. As part of the implementation plan, the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall determine how to address transgender individuals currently serving in the United States military. Until the Secretary has made that determination, no action may be taken against such individuals under the policy set forth in section 1(b) of this memorandum.” The Memorandum also has a severability provision, the usual disclaimers accompanying presidential directives about not creating new rights or changing the authority of any government departments or agencies, and permission to the Secretary to publish the Memorandum in the Federal Register. (It was made immediately available on the White House website.)

On a plain reading, the “effective dates and implementation” section appears to mark a substantial retreat from the absolutist tone of the July 26 tweets. In trying to construe the tweets, there had been speculation that transgender service members would be immediately discharged or pressured to resign in order to avoid discharge. Leaks from the White House while staff members were working on a written guidance for the president to sign led to reports that transgender enlisted personnel would be allowed to serve out their enlistments but then be denied reenlistment while being encouraged to resign earlier, and that transgender officers could continue to serve their commissions but would be required to resign if being considered for promotions.

Based on the leaks, GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the Boston-based New England public interest law firm, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), based in San Francisco, with cooperating attorneys from Foley Hoag LLP and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP, filed a lawsuit on August 9 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, representing five “Jane Doe” plaintiffs, all presently serving transgender individuals, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. Doe v. Trump, Case 1:17-cv-01597. The plaintiffs, with varying lengths of service, present compelling stories about the harms the proposed policy would have on them, based, of course, on what was known when the complaint was filed. Among them, of course, were interference with ongoing transitions, interference with attaining military pensions (which some were close to vesting), and loss of career and benefits, affecting not only the plaintiffs but their family members as well. There was also the emotional stress generated by uncertainty about their future employment and welfare.

The three-count complaint asserts violations of equal protection and due process (Fifth Amendment) and invokes the doctrine of estoppel to prevent adverse moves against the plaintiffs and those similarly situated as presently serving transgender members of the military who had been encouraged to “come out” as transgender under the earlier policy. The named defendants, in addition to the president, are Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., the Departments of the Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard, Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy, Air Force Secretary Heather A. Wilson, Homeland Security Secretary Elaine C. Duke, and, for good measure, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. There was some speculation and criticism that filing the lawsuit before a formal policy was announced or implemented was premature and might result in a dismissal on grounds of standing or ripeness, but the release of the formal guidance just a few weeks after the suit was filed will undoubtedly lead to the filing of an amended complaint focusing more specifically at the changes announced in the Memorandum. The lengthy delay specified by the Memorandum for implementing changes may be invoked by the Justice Department in seeking to get this case dismissed. Perhaps the Memorandum was drafted with this strategic use in mind.

Press coverage of the July 26 tweets showed overwhelming opposition and criticism from media, many government officials, and members of both parties in Congress. Those who voiced support of the president’s announcement came from the House Republicans who had waged a losing battle to amend a pending Defense budget measure to ban use of any appropriations to pay for sex reassignment surgery for military members, and there were soon press reports that supporters of that amendment had specifically asked the president to take steps to prevent spending federal funds for this purpose. Furthermore, it was reported that threats had been made to block passage of the Defense measure – which was intended to provide some funding for the president’s project to “build the wall” along the U.S. border with Mexico (reflecting his ignorance of world history, and most specifically of the spectacular failure of the vaunted “Maginot Line” constructed after World War I to protect France from any future invasion by German military forces) – unless the president prevented military expenditures on sex reassignment procedures. To the simple-minded president, the solution was obvious. Reviving a ban on all military service by transgender individuals meant that there would be no openly transgender individuals in the military seeking to have such procedures performed and, since reversing Obama Administration policies regardless of their merits seems to be the main goal of many of Trump’s actions, simply overturning the Obama Administration policy became his simplistic solution to his political problem. There was no indication that Trump made this decision after consulting “my Generals” or military experts – at least, the White House never revealed the names of any such individuals who were consulted, and it appeared that Secretary Mattis had merely been informed of the president’s intentions the night before the tweets. One suspects that Trump’s “expert” was likely Steve Bannon, a former Marine.

The August 25 Memorandum did not require the immediate, or even eventual, discharge of anybody, and appeared to give Secretary Mattis wide discretion to come up with an implementing plan and at least six months to do it, while barring any action against transgender service members during the intervening time. Furthermore, in typical “kick the can down the road” Trump style (which is, admittedly, a typical style of U.S. politicians generally, only more pronounced in this president), it leaves open the possibility that the Obama Administration policies will be left in place, provided Mattis asks for this in writing summoning persuasive evidence that nothing is gained and much is lost by preventing transgender individuals from enlisting or being commissioned out of the service academies or by blocking transgender service members (including commissioned officers) from continuing their service. Press accounts noted that the anticipated expense of covering sex reassignment surgery was dwarfed by the annual military expenditure on Viagra and similar drugs (Who knew, as Trump might ask, that the Defense Department, the government’s most “macho” agency, was spending so much money to stiffen the limp genitals of male members?), and that the replacement costs for several thousand fully-trained and productive military members would far outweigh the costs of down-time for the relatively small number of individuals at any given time who might be unavailable for assignment while recovering from sex reassignment surgery. (There is no indication that the other steps in gender transition, including hormone therapy, are disabling in a way that would interfere with military service.)

As worded, the Memorandum leant itself to the interpretation that with the passage of time, as the immediate political problem that “inspired” Trump to emit his tweets had been surmounted, sober heads could prevail, Mattis could reassure the transgender troops that nothing was happening right away, and eventually the president would accept Mattis’s written recommendation to allow transgender individuals to serve after all. (This interpretation depends on Mattis having the fortitude and political courage to tell the president, as he had done during the transition after the election on the subject of torture as an interrogation device, that Trump’s announced position did not make sense as a matter of military policy.) Of course, the Memorandum directive means continuing discrimination against transgender individuals who seek to enlist, raising serious constitutional issues in light of the increasing recognition by federal courts that gender identity discrimination is a form of sex discrimination in equal protection doctrine, but the Memorandum, as it plays out, could avoid the loss of employment for transgender individuals now serving, although it would pose continuing emotional stress stemming from the uncertainty of future developments until Mattis convinces the president to countermand his new “policy.”

When the GLAD/NCLR suit was filed, other organizations, including Lambda Legal and ACLU, announced that they would be preparing lawsuits as well, and the release of the Memorandum on August 25 led to immediate announcements that more lawsuits will be filed. “See you in court,” wrote ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero to the organization’s supporters. As with other “bold” executive actions by Trump, this anti-transgender initiative may be stopped in its tracks by preliminary injunctions, although the Memorandum was evidently drafted to try to minimize that likelihood by suggesting that nothing much is going to happen right away other than the continuing ban on enlistment. As to the enlistment ban, it is questionable that the original GLAD/NCLR plaintiffs, all currently serving members, have standing to challenge it, but one expects that an amended complaint would add as plaintiffs some transgender individuals who hope to enlist.

When a child is born to a woman married to another woman, both women should be listed as parents on the child’s birth certificate. So ruled the Supreme Court, voting 6-3 and reversing a decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court on the last day of its October 2016 Term, which was coincidentally the second anniversary of the Court’s historic marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), which provides the basis for this new ruling in Pavan v. Smith, No. 16-992 (June 26, 2017), reversing 505 S.W.3d 169 (2016).

The petitioners in this case were two married same-sex couples, Leigh and Jana Jacobs and Terrah and Marisa Pavan. Both couples resided in Arkansas when their children were born in 2015, having previously married out of state. Both couples filed paperwork with the state seeking birth certificates listing both mothers as parents. The state turned them down, issuing birth certificates listing just the birth mothers and leaving the space for fathers blank.

The state’s Health Department argued that this was compelled by a state statute that provides that when a married woman gives birth, her husband will be listed on the birth certificate. (This is frequently referred to as the parental presumption.) This is so even if the woman conceives through donor insemination and her husband is not the biological father of the child, or even if some other man got the wife pregnant. Incredibly, the Health Department sought to justify its refusal to name both parents on birth certificates by saying that the purpose of the birth certificate is to record biological lineage, which is pretty strange if husbands get listed regardless of their biological relation to the child. Furthermore, Arkansas, like other states, issues amended birth certificates if children are adopted, listing their new legal parents, again regardless of the fact that one or both of the adoptive parents are not biologically related to the child.

The women sued the Commissioner of the health department and the trial court agreed with them that this result was unconstitutional under Obergefell, because the statute “categorically prohibits every same-sex married couple from enjoying the same spousal benefits which are available to every opposite-sex married couple.” In Obergefell, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have the same right to marry as opposite-sex couples, which means they are entitled to be treated the same by the state for all reasons of law.

The Arkansas Supreme Court was divided in this case. A majority sided with the Health Department, buying the incredible argument that birth certificates are supposed to be a record of biological lineage. Wrote the Arkansas court, “The statute centers on the relationship of the biological mother and the biological father to the child, not on the marital relationship of husband and wife,” and so it was consistent with Obergefell. Not so, argued the dissenters, writing that under Obergefell “a same-sex married couple is entitled to a birth certificate on the same basis as an opposite-sex married couple.”

The majority U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the dissenters, finding this case so clear that it simultaneously granted the petition for review and issued a decision, without waiting for briefing on the merits or oral argument. The decision was issued “Per Curiam” (Latin for “by the Court”) without identifying an individual justice as its author.

The Court concluded that the Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision “denied married same-sex couples access to the ‘constellation of benefits that the State has linked to marriage,’” in violation of the Obergefell ruling. Under Arkansas’s statute, “same-sex parents in Arkansas lack the same right as opposite-sex parents to be listed on a child’s birth certificate, a document often used for important transactions like making medical decisions for a child or enrolling a child in school. Obergefell proscribes such disparate treatment.”

The Court pointed out that in the Obergefell decision it had included “birth and death certificates” in its list of “rights, benefits, and responsibilities” of marriage to which same-sex couples are entitled on the same basis as different-sex couples. “That was no accident,” said the Court, as “several of the plaintiffs in Obergefell challenged a State’s refusal to recognize their same-sex spouses on their children’s birth certificates. In considering those challenges, we held the relevant state laws unconstitutional to the extent they treated same-sex couples differently from opposite-sex couples.” The Court said this applied with “equal force” to the Arkansas statute.

Rejecting Arkansas’s argument that birth certificates were all about biological relationships, the Court insisted, to the contrary, that “Arkansas law makes birth certificates about more than just genetics,” citing as a prime example the provision involving donor insemination. “Arkansas has thus chosen to make its birth certificates more than a mere marker of biological relationships: The State uses those certificates to give married parents a form of legal recognition that is not available to unmarried parents. Having made that choice,” the Court continued, “Arkansas may not, consistent with Obergefell, deny married same-sex couples that recognition.” The case was sent back to the Arkansas courts for “further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.”

The Per Curiam Court included all of the justices who had voted in the majority in Obergefell plus Chief Justice John Roberts, who was the principal dissenter in the marriage case. Roberts’ vote in this case is notable, given the vehemence of his dissent in Obergefell, but apparently, accepting that Obergefell is now a precedent and that there are not five votes on the Court to overturn it, Roberts was willing to agree that the Arkansas Supreme Court’s ruling was inconsistent with it.

Not so the three dissenters, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the recently installed Neil Gorsuch, who wrote a dissent on their behalf. When Gorsuch was nominated, it was predicted that he would be as bad for LGBT rights as his predecessor, Justice Antonin Scalia, if not worse. His dissent here vindicated that view.

First, he scolded the Court for deciding the case summarily, arguing that the law in question is not “settled and stable.” He did not deem it clear that Obergefell would invalidate state laws restricting who could be listed on a birth certificate, when justified by a policy of recording biological ties.

He took a narrow view of Obergefell, as some lower courts have done in birth certificate litigation around the country, arguing that “nothing in Obergefell spoke (let alone clearly) to the question whether [the Arkansas statute], or a state supreme court decision upholding it, must go. The statute in question establishes a set of rules designed to ensure that the biological parents of a child are listed on the child’s birth certificate.” This is, of course, incorrect, as the Per Curiam opinion demonstrated. The state’s rules, requiring that the husband of a woman who conceives through donor insemination be listed as the child’s father, clearly do not “ensure” that the biological parents of a child are listed on the certificate. Indeed, as the Court noted in passing in its Per Curiam opinion, the “rules” in Arkansas even provide that if the birth mother, her husband, and the actual biological father of the child all agree in sworn statements, the actual father can be listed instead of the husband, but otherwise the husband would be listed. Clearly, listing people on birth certificates in Arkansas under current statutes is not all about biological relationships.

Gorsuch also noted that since this litigation has been under way Arkansas officials have come around to agree that the birth mother’s spouse should be listed on the birth certificate. Since the state has now agreed (without amending its statute) that it should list same-sex spouses on birth certificates, Gorsuch professes to see no reason for this ruling. “Indeed,” he wrote, “it is not even clear what the Court expects to happen on remand that hasn’t happened already. The Court does not offer any remedial suggestion, and none leaps to mind. Perhaps the state supreme court could memorialize the state’s concession.” Indeed, exactly so, the proper action on remand is a judicial declaration that same-sex spouses are entitled to be listed on birth certificates, and a permanent injunction requiring that result. This is not superfluous, since the state legislature has not amended the statute.

The Court’s decision will affect pending litigation elsewhere. In Arizona, the state’s intermediate court of appeals ruled on June 22 in Turner v. Steiner, 2017 WL 2687680, that a lesbian co-parent was not entitled to be listed on a birth certificate, conflicting with a ruling by another panel of the court of appeals, McLaughlin v. Jones, 382 P.3d 118 (2016), which was recently granted review by the Arizona Supreme Court. The Turner decision cited the Arkansas Supreme Court’s ruling in this case, as well as a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling from 2015, In re P.L.L.-R., 876 N.W.2d 147. Plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case should be able to file a new suit based on Pavan, if necessary, but perhaps Pavan v. Smith will encourage state officials to drop their obstructions and accord equal treatment to same-sex married couples.

The plaintiffs in this case were represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, with local counsel Cheryl Maples of Heber Springs, Arkansas. Attorneys from the Washington and Boston offices of Ropes & Gray, LLP, worked on the case in collaboration with NCLR, and R&G’s Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, who shared the oral argument in the marriage equality cases two years ago, was Counsel of Record who might have argued the case had the Court scheduled a hearing.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on February 13, seeking review of the Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision that the state was not required under Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), to extend the presumption of parentage to the same-sex spouse of a birth mother for purposes of recording parentage on a birth certificate. Smith v. Pavan, 2016 WL 7156529 (Ark. December 8, 2016), petition for certiorari filed sub nom. Pavan v. Smith, No. 16-992.

The Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision, by a sharply divided court with three strong dissenting opinions, was the first ruling on this question to depart from a post-Obergefell consensus of courts in other jurisdictions that equal marriage rights for same-sex couples necessarily include the equal right to have a spouse recorded as a parent on a birth certificate, despite the lack of a “biological” tie to the child, especially in light of the common practice of automatically recognizing a birth mother’s husband for that purpose, regardless whether he is “biologically related” to the child.

The due process and equal protection issues raised by the Arkansas court’s decision are stark, raising the possibility that the Supreme Court might consider this an appropriate case for a summary reversal, similar to its decision last term to summarily reverse the Alabama Supreme Court’s refusal to accord full faith and credit to a same-sex second parent adoption approved by a Georgia family court in V.L. v. E.L., 136 S. Ct. 1017 (March 7, 2016). In V.L. the Court moved quickly to reverse the state supreme court ruling based on the certiorari filings, seeing no need for full briefing and hearing on the merits. That ruling was announced several weeks after the death of Justice Scalia by the eight-member Court, and brought no dissent from any justices, three of whom had dissented in Obergefell. They implicitly agreed that with Obergefell as a precedent, there was no justification for recognizing any exception to the general rule that adoption decrees are to be recognized when the court granting the adoption clearly had jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter of the adoption petition. They rejected the Alabama Supreme Court’s reliance on its own interpretation of the Georgia adoption statute as withholding “jurisdiction” from the family court to grant such an adoption.

NCLR petitioned on behalf of two married same-sex couples – Marisa and Terrah Pavan and Leigh and Jana Jacobs. Each couple had married out of state and then, living in Arkansas, had a child conceived through donor insemination. In both cases, the mothers completed the necessary paper work to get a birth certificate when their children were born. In both cases, the state health department issued a certificate naming only the birth mother and leaving the space for “father” blank on the birth certificate rather than naming the other mother. The state insisted that under its statute the automatic listing was limited to a husband of the birth mother.

The women filed suit against the director of the state health department, Dr. Nathaniel Smith, seeking to compel issuance of appropriate birth certificates, together with another couple who were not married when they had their child but who subsequently married after the Obergefell decision and sought an amended birth certificate. That other couple is no longer in the case, having gone through an adoption proceeding and obtained a new birth certificate naming both mothers. The Arkansas state trial court construed Obergefell and its own marriage equality decision, Wright v. Smith, to require according equal recognition to same-sex marriages for this purpose, and ordered the state to issue amended birth certificates accordingly. The trial court refused to stay its decision pending appeal, so the certificates were issued.

The Arkansas Supreme Court reversed, even though the state conceded at oral argument that in light of its statute requiring that a husband be listed on a birth certificate regardless whether he was biologically related to the child the state’s position was inconsistent with its own practice. Indeed, the state conceded at oral argument that it had no rational basis for treating same-sex and different-sex spouses differently for this purpose. However, the state insisted that it was refusing to list same-sex spouses consistent with its gender-specific statute because the birth certificate was necessary to establish the identity of biological parents for public health reasons. This was a patently absurd argument in light of the various circumstances under Arkansas law where non-biological fathers are listed on birth certificates.

The dissenting judges pointed in various ways to the Obergefell decision, which actually listed birth certificates as one of the issues related to marital rights that helped explain why the right to marry was a fundamental right. Furthermore, as the certiorari petition points out in detail, the very question raised by this case was specifically part of the Obergefell case, as the underlying state cases that were consolidated into the appeal argued at the 6th Circuit and the Supreme Court included plaintiffs who were married lesbian couples seeking to have appropriate birth certificates for their children. In those cases, the certificates had been denied by states that refused to recognize the validity of the mothers’ out-of-state marriages. Thus, the Supreme Court’s reference to birth certificates was part of the issue before the Court, not merely illustrative of the reasons why the Court deemed the right to marry fundamental, and in holding that states were required to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other states, the Court was incidentally addressing the refusal of states in the cases before the Court to recognize petitioners’ marriages for purposes of recording the names of parents on birth certificates!

Thus, the Arkansas Supreme Court majority was clearly wrong in asserting that the Obergefell decision did not address this issue and pertained only to the question whether same-sex couples had a right to marry. Given biological facts, lesbian couples having children through donor insemination are exactly similarly situated with different-sex couples having children through donor insemination, as in both cases the spouse of the birth mother is not the biological parent of the child. By the logic of Obergefell, denial of such recognition and marital rights offends both due process and equal protection guarantees of the 14th Amendment. And, as the Petition points out, such denial relegates same-sex marriages to a “second tier” treatment, which was condemned by the Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), when it ruled that the federal government was required to extend equal recognition to same-sex marriages validly contracted under state laws. In both cases, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the inability of same-sex lesbian couples to conceive children without a sperm donor provided a rational basis to deny recognition to their marriages or treat them differently from the marriages of heterosexual couples.

NCLR attorneys on the Petition including Legal Director Shannon Minter and staff attorneys Christopher Stoll and Amy Whelan. Arkansas attorney Cheryl Maples is listed as local counsel. Cooperating Attorneys from Ropes & Gray LLP (Washington and Boston offices) on the Petition include Molly Gachignard, Christopher Thomas Brown, Justin Florence, Joshua Goldstein and Daniel Swartz, with prominent R&G partner Douglas Hallward-Driemeier as Counsel of Record for the case. Hallward-Driemeier successfully argued the marriage recognition issue before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges. GLAD attorney Mary Bonauto from Boston argued the right to marry issue in Obergefell.

The Court of Appeals of Arizona ruled on October 11 that as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), holding that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry and that their marriages must receive equal treatment under the law to those of different-sex couples, the Arizona courts must construe the state’s paternity statute in a gender neutral way so that the same-sex spouse of a woman who gives birth enjoys the presumption of parental status. McLaughlin v. Jones, 2016 Ariz. App. LEXIS 256, 2016 WL 5929205 (Oct. 11, 2016). Judge Philip Espinosa wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.

Kimberly and Suzan were legally married in California in October 2008, shortly before voters approved Proposition 8, which enshrined a different-sex only marriage definition in the state constitution. Shortly thereafter, however, the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages contracted before the passage of Prop 8 remained valid under California law. “The couple agreed to have a child through artificial insemination,” wrote Judge Espinosa, “using an anonymous sperm donor selected from a sperm bank.” Suzan’s efforts to conceive this way were unsuccessful, but Kimberly became pregnant in 2010. Before their child was born, the women moved to Arizona, a state that did not then recognize their marriage or allow second-parent adoptions.

The women made a joint parenting agreement and executed mirror-image wills, declaring “they were to be equal parents of the child Kimberly was carrying,” wrote the court. After their son was born in June 2011, Suzan was the stay-at-home mom while Kimberly resumed her work as a physician. The women’s relationship deteriorated, however, and when their son was almost two years old, Kimberly moved out of their home, taking the child with her and cutting off his contact with Suzan.

In April 2013, Suzan filed a petition for dissolution of the marriage and a petition for a court order recognizing her parental status in various ways, most significantly decision-making and parenting time. The matter came before Superior Court Judge Lori Jones in Pima County, who decided to stay the proceedings while marriage equality litigation was pending. In January 2016, six months after the Supreme Court decided Obergefell, Kimberly moved to set the case for trial and Judge Jones ordered briefing concerning “the issue whether the case was a dissolution proceeding with or without children in view of the presumption of paternity under an Arizona statute, Section 25-814(A). In an April 7, 2016, ruling, Judge Jones found that it would violate Suzan’s 14th Amendment rights not to afford her the same presumption of parenthood that a husband would enjoy. Thus, she ordered, the case should proceed as a “dissolution action with children.”

Kimberly then moved for a declaratory judgment about whether she would be permitted to introduce evidence to rebut the presumption. On May 2, Judge Jones ruled that Kimberly would not be permitted to attempt to rebut the presumption that Suzan was a parent of their son. Jones found that there was nothing for Kimberly to rebut, adding that a “family presumption applies to same sex and opposite sex non-biological spouses married to a spouse who conceived a child during the marriage via artificial insemination.” She relied on Section 25-501, a support statute which is applicable when a child is born as a result of donor insemination, finding that this “necessarily gives rise to parental rights in the non-biological spouse.” Kimberly appealed this ruling.

On appeal, Kimberly argued that as the child’s biological mother, “she is, by definition, the only parent and therefore the only person who has parental rights, which are fundamental rights,” wrote Judge Espinosa, summarizing Kimberly’s argument. She contended that Judge Jones erroneously construed the paternity statute to encompass same-sex lesbian couples. Suzan, in response, argued that because of Obergefell, parentage statutes “must be applied and interpreted in a gender-neutral manner so that same-sex couples’ fundamental marital rights are not restricted and they are afforded the same benefits of marriage as heterosexual couples and on the same terms,” wrote Espinosa.

The Arizona statute defining “legal parents” includes “biological” or “adoptive” parents, and “does not include a person whose paternity has not been established pursuant to Section 25-812 [acknowledgment of paternity] or Section 25-814 [presumptions of paternity].” The court found that Section 25-814(A)(1) applies to the McLaughlin case, assuming one applies a gender-neutral interpretation of the statutory language. This provides that “a man is presumed to be the father of the child if 1. He and the mother of the child were married at any time in the ten months immediately preceding the birth.”

Judge Espinosa wrote, “Enacted well before the Supreme Court decided Obergefell, this statute was written with gender-specific language at a time when the marriage referred to in subsection (A)(1) could only be between a man and a woman.” While accepting Kimberly’s argument that Judge Jones should not have relied on the child support statute to determine Suzan’s status, the court rejected Kimberly’s argument that “it would be impossible and absurd to apply Section 25-841(A)(1) in a gender-neutral manner to give rise to presumption parenthood in Suzan. Indeed, Obergefell mandates that we do so,” he continued, “and the plain language of the statute, as well as the purpose and policy behind it, are not in conflict with that application.” Not to do that would deprive same-sex married couples of the same “terms and conditions of marriage” as are enjoyed by different-sex couples, which would be a clear violation of the Supreme Court’s mandate of equal treatment in Obergefell.

“The word ‘paternity’ therefore signifies more than biologically established paternity,” wrote Espinosa. “It encompasses the notion of parenthood, including parenthood voluntarily established without regard to biology.” He pointed out that the long-established purpose of paternity statutes is “to provide financial support for the child of the natural parent.” The marital presumption “is intended to assure that two parents will be required to provide support for a child born during the marriage” and serves the additional purpose “or preserving the family unit.” For these propositions, the court relied on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling in Partanen v. Gallagher, decided just days earlier. The court rejected Kimberly’s argument that there was any reason to treat men and women differently in this regard, after Obergefell.

As to Kimberly’s request to be able to rebut the presumption of parenthood, the court held that it “need not decide how the rebuttal provision in Section 25-814(C) applies in a same-sex marriage because we determine Kimberly is estopped from rebutting the presumption. Equitable estoppel applies when a party engages in acts inconsistent with a position later adopted and the other party justifiably relies on those acts, resulting in an injury.”

In this case, it was uncontested that the women were lawfully married when Kimberly became pregnant as a result of a donor insemination process upon which both women agreed. It is not disputed that their son was born during the marriage. It is not disputed that Suzan was the stay-at-home mom and cared for their son until Kimberly “left the home with him.” Furthermore, the women had made a written parenting agreement providing that they were to be equal parents of the child. In that agreement, Kimberly agreed to “waive any constitutional, federal or state law that provide her with a greater right to custody and visitation than that enjoyed by Suzan.” They even provided in the agreement that if their relationship broke down, Suzan would continue to enjoy parenting rights, and that if second-parent adoption became available in the jurisdiction where they lived, Suzan would adopt the child. Since their partnership broke up before Obergefell was decided, however, Suzan never had an opportunity to adopt their son.

The court concluded that based on these uncontested facts, the doctrine of equitable estoppel applied, barring Kimberly from attempting to rebut the presumption that Suzan is a parent to their son. “Suzan is the only parent other than Kimberly,” wrote Judge Espinosa, “and having two parents to love and support [their son] is in his best interest. Under these circumstances, Kimberly is estopped from rebutting the presumption of parenthood pursuant to Section 25-814(C).”

Consequently, Kimberly’s appeal was denied, and the case will continue before Judge Jones as a dissolution with a child. It will be up to Judge Jones in the first instance to determine whether it is in the best interest of the child to order Kimberly to allow Suzan to have a continuing relationship, including parenting time and decision-making authority.

Kimberly is represented by Keith Berkshire and Megan Lankford, Phoenix. Suzan is represented by Campbell Law Group, Phoenix, and attorneys from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, San Francisco. Appointed counsel for the child included law students and supervising faculty from various clinical programs, including the Family and Juvenile Law Certificate Program in Tucson, and Child and Family Law Clinic in Tucson, the Community Law Group, Tucson, and the Child and Family Law Clinic at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law.

California’s S.B. 1172, which prohibits state-licensed mental health providers from engaging in “sexual orientation change efforts” (commonly known as “conversion therapy”) with minors, withstood another 1st Amendment challenge in a new decision by the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in the case of Welch v. Brown, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 15444, 2016 WL 4437617, announced on August 23.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the court of appeals affirmed a ruling by U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb that the law does not violate the religious freedom rights of mental health providers who wish to provide such “therapy” to minors or of their potential patients.

In a previous ruling, the court had rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that the law violated their free speech rights. They had argued that such therapy mainly involves talking, making the law an impermissible abridgement of freedom of speech. The court had countered that this was a regulation of health care practice, which is within the traditional powers of the state. As such, the court found that the state had a rational basis for imposing this regulation, in light of evidence in the legislative record of the harms that such therapy could do to minors.

In this case, the plaintiffs were arguing that their 1st Amendment religious freedom claim required the court to apply strict scrutiny to the law, putting the burden on the state to show that the law was narrowly-tailored to achieve a compelling state interest. They contended that the law “excessively entangles the State with religion,” but the court, in an opinion by Circuit Judge Susan P. Graber, said that this argument “rests on a misconception of the scope of SB 1172,” rejecting the plaintiffs’ claims that the law would prohibit “certain prayers during religious services.” Graber pointed out that the law “regulates conduct only within the confines of the counselor-client relationship” and doesn’t apply to clergy (even if they also happen to hold a state mental health practitioner license) when they are carrying out clerical functions.

“SB 1172 regulates only (1) therapeutic treatment, not expressive speech, by (2) licensed mental health professionals acting within the confines of the counselor-client relationship,” she wrote, a conclusion that “flows primarily from the text of the law.” Under a well-established doctrine called “constitutional avoidance,” the court was required not to interpret the statute in the manner suggested by the plaintiffs. This conclusion was bolstered by legislative history, ironically submitted by the plaintiffs, which showed the narrow application intended by the legislature. Thus, “Plaintiffs are in no practical danger of enforcement outside the confines of the counselor-client relationship.”

Plaintiffs also advanced an Establishment Clause argument, contending that the measure has a principal or primary purpose of “inhibiting religion.” Graber countered with the legislature’s stated purpose to “protect the physical and psychological well-being of minors, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, and to protect its minors against exposure to serious harm cause by” this “therapy.” The court found that the “operative provisions” of the statute are “fully consistent with that secular purpose.” A law that has a secular purpose with a possible incidental effect on religious practice is not subject to strict scrutiny under Supreme Court precedents. Again, the court pointed out, religious leaders acting in their capacity as clergy are not affected by this law.

The court also rejected the contention that a minor’s religiously-motivated intent in seeking such therapy would be thwarted by the law, thus impeding their free exercise of religion. The court pointed out that “minors who seek to change their sexual orientation – for religious or secular reasons – are free to do so on their own and with the help of friends, family, and religious leaders. If they prefer to obtain such assistance from a state-licensed mental health provider acting within the confines of a counselor-client relationship, they can do so when they turn 18.”

The court acknowledged that a law “aimed only at persons with religious motivations” could raise constitutional concerns, but that was not this law. The court said that the evidence of legislative history “falls far short of demonstrating that the primary intended effect of SB 1172 was to inhibit religion,” since the legislative hearing record was replete with evidence from professional associations about the harmful effects of SOCE therapy, regardless of the motivation of minors in seeking it out. Referring in particularly to an American Psychiatric Association Task Force Report, Judge Graber wrote, “Although the report concluded that those who seek SOCE ‘tend’ to have strong religious views, the report is replete with references to non-religious motivations, such as social stigma and the desire to live in accordance with ‘personal’ values.” Thus, wrote the court, “an informed and reasonable observer would conclude that the ‘primary effect’ of SB 1172 is not the inhibition (or endorsement) of religion.”

The court also rejected the argument that the law failed the requirement that government be “neutral” concerning religion and religious controversies. It also rejected the argument that prohibiting this treatment violates the privacy or liberty interests of the practitioners or their potential patients, quoting from a prior 9th Circuit ruling: “We have held that ‘substantive due process rights do not extend to the choice of type of treatment or of a particular health care provider.’”

Attorneys from the Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative legal organization, represent the plaintiffs. The statute was defended by the office of California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris. Attorneys from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, with pro bono assistance from attorneys at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, filed an amicus brief defending the statute on behalf of Equality California, a state-wide LGBT rights political organization.

Reversing a ruling by the state’s court of appeals, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled on August 18 that the state’s statutory prohibition of common law marriage, enacted a century ago, still “precludes unmarried cohabitants [including same-sex couples] from bringing claims against one another to enforce mutual property rights where the rights asserted are rooted in a marriage-like relationship between the parties.” Although two different panels of the state’s intermediate court of appeals have rejected this view as outmoded, in this and another case recently reported, the Supreme Court voted 5-2 in Blumenthal v. Brewer, 2016 IL 118781, 2016 Ill. LEXIS 763, to reaffirm a 1979 decision that had refused to follow the then-recent trend in some other states to allow “implied contract” and other common law claims when an unmarried couple breaks up.

Justice Lloyd Karmier wrote the opinion for the court. Justice Mary Jane Theis dissented in relevant part, joined by Justice Anne M. Burke.

Dr. Jane E. Blumenthal and Judge Eileen M. Brewer had lived together since 1981 as domestic partners, sharing a home, raising children, and pooling their resources to buy property and to invest in a medical practice for Dr. Blumenthal. They broke up in 2010, before Illinois passed a civil union law and, of course, before the ultimate arrival of marriage equality in Illinois. At the time of their breakup, Dr. Blumenthal filed a petition in the circuit court in Chicago for “a fair division and partition of property to be made between the parties according to their respective rights and interests,” including the possibility that the property be sold and the proceeds divided “according to their respective rights or interests in such proceeds as ascertained and declared” by the court.

Brewer responded with a counterclaim, reciting the women’s past relationship as “identical in every essential way to that of a married couple,” asking the court in effect to handle the assets like the joint assets of a married couple, taking into account such things as the value of the medical practice (as would be done in a divorce case involving a doctor) and the value of services rendered and decisions made within the scope of the relationship, such as Brewer having sublimated her own career in supporting Dr. Blumenthal in establishing her medical practice.

The trial court rejected Brewer’s claim and divided up the real property along non-marital equitable lines based on the financial contributions for acquisition of the property. That court relied on the Illinois Supreme Court’s 1979 ruling in Hewitt v. Hewitt, 77 Ill. 2d 49, which had rejected a similar claim by a woman who had cohabitated with her male partner for many years and sought to be treated like a spouse in distributing assets upon their break-up. Brewer’s appeal was received favorably by the court of appeals which, while acknowledging that the Illinois Supreme Court had never overruled Hewitt v. Hewitt, nonetheless concluded that the decision had become obsolete due to subsequent developments. The appeals court pointed out that many of the legal principles relied on by the Supreme Court in Hewitt, such as a statute criminalizing unmarried cohabitation, had changed over the intervening thirty-plus years, also including such statutory developments as adoption of no-fault divorce, a statute providing inheritance rights for children of unmarried couples, enactment of the civil union law and, ultimately, marriage equality (which was achieved legislatively in Illinois after the Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act). The court of appeals ordered that the case be sent back to Cook County Circuit Court to reconsider Brewer’s claims.

This time Blumenthal appealed, winning a majority of the state Supreme Court, which observed as a starting point that the court of appeals does not have the authority to overrule a decision by the Supreme Court. Its proper path would have been to apply Hewitt, accompanied by a suggest that Brewer appeal, and perhaps urging the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling.

Justice Karmeier pointed out that Hewitt had continued to be cited and relied upon by Illinois courts throughout the intervening period. Karmeier noted that in Hewitt itself the court had stated that it was up to the legislature to decide whether some legal rights should be made available to unmarried co-habitants. As the court of appeals pointed out, the legislature had indeed passed several statutes updating Illinois domestic relations law in various ways, but it had never actually overruled the Hewitt decision or rescinded the state’s absolute ban on common law marriage, even though the legislature was clearly aware of the Hewitt ruling.

In an ironic move, Karmeier quoted from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s marriage equality opinion, Obergefell v. Hodges, which emphasized the importance and centrality of marriage as a social and legal institution. Karmeier observed that Illinois’ ban on common law marriage was passed to bolster marriage by requiring people to marry if they wanted access to marital rights. If anything, he asserted, Obergefell encouraged the majority of the court to resist extending marital rights to an unmarried couple, which would be contrary to the policy of encouraging and bolstering the institution of marriage by preserving that rights that it afforded to couples who married.

The court of appeals emphasized that throughout the duration of the Blumenthal-Brewer relationship, Illinois had not allowed same-sex couples to marry, which that courtt contended would justify treating them differently from the opposite-sex couple in the Hewitt case, who could have married. Karmeier found this argument unavailing, pointing out that the record in this case shows that Blumenthal and Brewer actually obtained a marriage license in Massachusetts in 2005, but never went through with the ceremony. Furthermore, he pointed out, Edith Windsor and her lesbian partner went to Canada in 2007 to marry at a time when New York would not allow them to do so, with Edith then suing the federal government for refusing to treat her as a surviving spouse for tax purposes. That is, for several years towards the end of their relationship, there were ways that Blumenthal and Brewer could have married – even if Illinois would not then have recognized the marriage – but they didn’t do so. Had they done so, Brewer might have raised a constitutional argument in support of her property rights claim, but in the absence of any such attempt, the court would not recognize her argument that denying her this recognition now violated her due process or equal protection rights.

In dissent, Justice Theis argued that the majority had mischaracterized Hewitt, an outmoded precedent that should be overturned. Hewitt “etched into the Illinois Reports the arcane view that domestic partners who choose to cohabit, but not marry, are engaged in ‘illicit’ or ‘meretricious’ behavior at odds with foundational values of ‘our family-based society,’” she wrote. “’Meretricious’ means ‘of or relating to a prostitute’ [Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1413 (1986)], so this court labeled such people as prostitutes. The majority’s attempt to distance itself from Hewitt’s sweeping and near-defamatory statement is unconvincing.” She went on to show how the majority opinion “perpetuated the most offensive and outmoded assumptions underlying the Hewitt decision.”

Also, characterizing Hewitt as an “outlier” among the states, she included a long string of citations to cases from other states in which courts had developed the common law to protect legitimate property interests of unmarried cohabitants when parties of unequal means ended their relationships. She asserted that only Georgia and Louisiana have rulings similar to Hewitt still in effect. “Courts in a vast majority of the remaining states, as well as the District of Columbia, that have chosen not to recognize common-law marriages also have chosen to recognize claims between former domestic partners like Blumenthal and Brewer,” she wrote. Furthermore, “the recognition of claims between domestic partners has not revived the doctrine of common-law marriage in jurisdictions that have abolished it.”

“Hewitt must be overruled because the legal landscape that formed the background for our decision has changed significantly,” she wrote, reciting the lengthy list of the changes that the Illinois legislature and courts had made to the framework of law surrounding unmarried couples since 1979. She rejected the majority’s holding that claims like Brewer’s would be inappropriate under existing Illinois marriage statutes or would undermine the institution of marriage.

Because Brewer did attempt to assert federal due process and equal protection claims in this appeal, she could seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court. However, that Court would abstain from deciding any questions of state law, as to which the Illinois Supreme Court has the last judicial word. Justice Karmeier did mention that in Hewitt, the Court implicitly invited the state legislature to consider whether the legal rights of unmarried cohabitants should be expanded. This new decision effectively reiterates that invitation.

Attorneys for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Chicago Attorney Angelika Keuhn represented Judge Brewer in her quest for equitable treatment in the wake of end of her relationship with Dr. Blumenthal. Professor Nancy Polikoff of American University Law School, a leading advocate for legal recognition of non-traditional families, filed an amicus brief in support of Brewer’s claims on behalf of Lambda Legal and the ACLU.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton ruled on January 4 in Schuett v. FedEx Corporation, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 244, 2015 WL 39890 (N.D. Cal.), that the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in U.S. v. Windsor, striking down Section 3, a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), could be applied retroactively to allow Stacey Schuett, a lesbian widow, to sue her late spouse’s employer for a survivor annuity. Although the judge rejected a claim that the lawsuit could be brought directly under the company’s pension plan or as a breach of fiduciary duty action against the plan’s administrators, she accepted the argument that the plan could be sued for violating the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) by failing to authorize the annuity for the plaintiff.

The story is complicated. This account is based on what Stacey Schuett alleged in her complaint, as summarized by Judge Hamilton.

Schuett lived together in a committed relationship for 27 years with Lesly Taboada-Hall, who passed away from cancer on June 20, 2013, just a week before the Supreme Court’s momentous June 26 decisions rejecting an appeal of the federal court ruling that struck down California Proposition 8 and striking down Section 3 of DOMA. For almost the entire length of their relationship, Taboada-Hall had been employed by Federal Express (FedEx), and she was a fully-vested participant in the FedEx Pension Plan.

As required by ERISA, the plan states that if an employee with a vested pension dies before retiring, their surviving spouse is eligible to receive a “qualified joint and survivor annuity” for the rest of their life. The written pension plan uses the federal definition of spouse, directly referring to Section 3 of DOMA, which defined a spouse as “a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.” This is the definition that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional on June 26, 2013.

Ms. Taboada-Hall was diagnosed with cancer in February, 2010, and as her condition worsened she took a medical leave of absence from FedEx in November 2012. In February 2013, facing the fact that she would not be able to resume working, she contacted a FedEx human resources representative about her pension and other employee benefits, since she was eligible for early retirement under the terms of the pension plan. The representative advised her not to retire, since she could continue on medical leave and have her medical expenses covered under the FedEx employee benefits plan. She was asked about her other benefits, and was advised to name Schuett as her sole beneficiary on the other plans. She also asked whether Schuett would get the “defined pension benefit” to which Taboada-Hall would be entitled, if Taboada-Hall died before retiring. The representative said he did not know the answer to that and said “ask someone else.”

On June 3, 2013, the doctor advised that Taboada-Hall was terminal and did not have long to live. Schuett and Taboada-Hall looked again through the benefits package, and noticed that the plan defined “spouse” with reference to DOMA. Between June 3 and June 13, they had several conversations with FedEx human resources personnel trying to find out what would happen to Taboada-Hall’s benefits, and on June 13 they received the answer: Schuett would not receive a surviving spouse benefit because only opposite-sex partners could be recognized under the plan.

They quickly arranged with a Sonoma County Supervisor to come to their home and perform a civil marriage ceremony, even though they could not get a marriage license because Proposition 8 was still in effect. The ceremony was witnessed by friends and family members on June 19. The next day Taboada-Hall died, and six days later Prop 8 and DOMA were declared unconstitutional.

What to do next? Two days after the Prop 8 decision, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted its stay and Judge Vaughan Walker’s 2010 ruling holding Prop 8 unconstitutional went into effect. Of course, the logical implication of the Supreme Court’s decision that the proponents of Prop 8 did not have standing to appeal Judge Walker’s decision was that Walker’s ruling should have been in effect from the summer of 2010 when it was issued, so by rights Taboada-Hall and Schuett should have been able to get a marriage license at any time since then. Furthermore, the logical implication of the DOMA decision was that the federal definition of marriage was unconstitutional from the date it was enacted in 1996.

Schuett went into Sonoma County Superior Court on August 6, 2013, filing a Petition to Establish the Fact, Date, and Place of Marriage, contending that the June 19 marriage should be retroactively validated. That court agreed, ruling on September 18, 2013, that the marriage was valid as of June 19, 2013, issuing a delayed certificate of marriage carrying that date. This means that Schuett was a surviving widow when Taboada-Hall died on June 20, and thus she should be entitled to be treated as a surviving spouse by FedEx.

But not so fast! FedEx turned her down for the benefit, arguing that eligibility depended on the terms of the written plan, which was limited to surviving different-sex spouses. In Schuett’s federal lawsuit against FedEx for the benefit, Judge Hamilton agreed with FedEx that Schuett could not sue for the benefit directly, since only beneficiaries under a plan can sue for benefits and under the terms of the written plan she was not a beneficiary. Furthermore, Judge Hamilton agreed with FedEx that the administrators of the plan had not violated their fiduciary duty, which required them to follow a reasonable interpretation of the written plan’s terms. The judge granted FedEx’s motion to dismiss Schuett’s claims under these two legal theories.

However, plan administrators are required to administer plans “in accordance with applicable law,” wrote Judge Hamilton. ERISA provides that a plan must provide an annuity benefit to the spouse of an employee who has a fully vested pension benefit but dies before they have retired and begun to receive retirement benefits. Schuett argued that since California recognized her as being married on June 19, 2013, the day before Taboada-Hall died, she should be considered a surviving spouse for purposes of this ERISA provision. She pointed out that in the Windsor case, the Supreme Court not only declared DOMA unconstitutional but also ordered that the federal government refund with interest the money Edie Windsor had paid to cover estate taxes of her wife, Thea Speyer, which would not have been due if the federal government recognized their Canadian marriage. Thus, the ruling in Windsor was itself retroactive.

Judge Hamilton accepted Schuett’s argument, finding that “ERISA requires a fiduciary to follow plan documents insofar as such documents are consistent with Title I of ERISA. ERISA requires defined benefit plans such as the Plan at issue to provide a qualified preretirement survivor annuity to all married participants who are vested and die before the annuity starting date, unless the participant has waived the benefit and the spouse consented to the waiver.” Furthermore, the Department of Labor had issued a “guidance” document making clear that “ERISA’s mandatory benefits provisions apply to all spouses, including same-sex spouses.”

Among the cases Judge Hamilton relied upon were Cozen O’Connor P.C. v. Tobits, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105507, 2013 WL 3878688 (E.D. Pa. 2013), specifically on an ERISA survivor benefits claim involving a same-sex couple, and Harper v. Virginia Dep’t of Taxation, 509 U.S. 86 (1993), on retroactivity when the Supreme Court announces a new rule of federal law and applies it retroactively to the parties in the case.

Hamilton found that the Windsor decision “appears to invalidate Section 3 of DOMA retroactive to 1996, the date of enactment. Notably, the decision in Windsor applied retroactively.”

“In the present case,” she wrote, “although California denied recognition of the term ‘spouse’ to same-sex couples at the time of Ms. Taboada-Hall’s death on June 20, 2013, the Sonoma County Superior Court determined that plaintiff and Ms. Taboada-Hall were married on June 19, 2013, and issued a delayed marriage certificate. . . [T]his court defers to the California court’s certification of the marriage. . . The court finds that plaintiff has adequately alleged that FedEx has violated Title I of ERISA by acting contrary to applicable federal law and failing to provide plaintiff with a benefit mandated by ERISA, and that she is entitled to pursue equitable relief to remedy that violation.” She concluded on this point that she was not persuaded “under the facts alleged in the complaint that there is any basis for denying retroactive application of Windsor.” Thus, Judge Hamilton denied FedEx’s motion to dismiss Schuett’s claim under the ERISA violation theory.

Stacey Schuett is represented by Nina Rachel Wasow, an attorney with Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow (Oakland); Amy Whelan, Christopher Francis Stoll, and Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (San Francisco); Julie Wilensky of Civil Rights Education & Enforcement Center (Berkeley); and Tate A. Birnie (Sebastopol). FedEx used in-house counsel to litigate its motion to dismiss, but would probably retain outside counsel if it seeks to appeal this ruling to the 9th Circuit. Since the FedEx plan administrators are under a fiduciary duty not to pay out any benefits that are not required by the plan or the law, they might conclude that they have to appeal this ruling, although the pragmatic approach could be to avoid the costs of litigation and grant Schuett’s claim for the annuity. Of course, it is also open to Schuett to appeal the court’s order dismissing her claim on the other legal theories.

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About the Author

Arthur S. Leonard, a professor at New York Law School since 1982, edits the monthly newsletter Lesbian/Gay Law Notes, and is co-author of Sexuality Law (Carolina Academic Press) and AIDS Law in a Nutshell (West Publishing Co.). He writes on legal issues for Gay City News (New York), and serves as a trustee of the Jewish Board of Family & Children's Services of New York.